Working in the health industry may be hazardous to your health if you are in Turkey.

It has become a common practice for patients, the family members or friends of a patient to attack doctors or health care workers for variety of reasons. Although some reasons behind the attacks are due to the position doctors are occupying in relation to peoples’ demands, the most important issue seems to be that violence in the country has increased exponentially in all areas of daily life. Add to this the ever-forceful injection of masculinity and patriarchy by the Islamic government, the picture does not get better.

Education has been pushed back in Turkey with the rise of the ruling AKP party. High schools have been converted to religious schools where science is not as important as faith anymore. It wasn’t always like this, but with the backward changes in the last 20 years or so, the education students receive blurs the lines between science and religion. This obscuring of lines raises a local charlatan who writes prayers on a folded paper for healing to the level of a doctor. But it also does the reverse.

When it is confusing on whether an imam or a doctor actually performs real healing, or, whether science or prayers are in effect. This confusion also raises irrational expectations on health services. It may become hard to understand why a patient is not healed by a doctor when the healing is perceived as just an applied magic of a simple injection, a pill, or a fast procedure. The failure of an expected recovery thus becomes a personal matter when the magical-mystical-doctor must have failed because s/he did not try enough or cheated you or your family.

It seems the trend to move away from science and knowledge to mysticism and prayers will continue if the AKP government survives.  The head of the Religious Affairs Agency in Turkey, an appointee of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current president, has recently stated that the Turkish education system must produce more doctors with the “fear of Allah in their hearts.”

A total collapse of a society is in full swing in Turkey as social programs, family ties, and government support has eroded for the common people. With courts either completely inefficient or stacked with government stooges both as prosecutors or judges, the justice system has ceased to become a place where people can take their grievances.  The police system has become nothing but to track government opposition with very little interest in any other dimension of daily life.  Government inspection of any private facility, including hospitals or clinics is non-existent. Turkey has become a haven for lasse-faire capitalism which simply translates to “do whatever you like to make a profit without any rules, regulations or oversight.” In other words, anything, as long as it is not against the government, goes.  Unfortunately, this also means you take the justice in your hands as well. And the result, in a society that is laden with violence, patriarchy, and even tribal ties becomes very dangerous. And doctors who are expected to perform miracles in the religious minds of frequently become the targets of attacks.

As the health system is thrown into chaos in a for-profit system, where in general people have lost all trust of any or all authority, everything or anybody is a suspect, even a doctor. And if one thinks the doctor is not giving the service one expects, be it rational or not, then one executes “justice” as one believes.

In this environment, the attacks on health care professionals have increased.  And the doctors, nurses, and the professional health care providers are asking the government to provide security in the face of deadly assaults. Yet, the government is not interested since closing down opposition newspapers or jailing oppositional National Assembly leaders take priority.

After repeated demands to the government for a solution to violence in health care and getting no response, the health care professionals decided to take their personal security issue to the streets. A change in the legal system to criminalize attacks on health care professionals has not materialized since it is low on the list of priorities of the Turkish government.

It is not unusual to hear the attack a doctor or a hospital technician would face, for example, when a person is brought to the hospital and the doctor asks the family members to leave the surgery room. A similar situation would ensue if a doctor would not perform a miracle recovery in an emergency room that the patient’s family expects.

To prevent such attacks the health professionals have called for a new “violence in health care” provisions to be added to the Turkish law.  Yet, the non-response of the officials brought doctors, nurses and care takers to meet at a plaza in Istanbul supported by the Chamber of Physicians of Istanbul, Chamber of Dentists of Istanbul, the Istanbul Pharmacists’ Chamber, the Chamber of Veterinarians of Istanbul and the Union of Health Care Workers, SES. The open and public meeting was also supported by the Revolutionary Health Workers Union head and the president of DİSK, the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions, Arzu Çerkezoğlu.

In the meeting, the attendees and their organizations pledged to hold a vigil and a guard every Friday evening until their demands for security are met.

It was only recently that a doctor was attacked because someone who walked into a hospital he was not registered in and wanted to receive a doctors’ report. He was guided to go to his home medical facility where his papers and medical reports were. Frustrated, the attacker beat the doctor in charge and broke his nose.

A similar event took place in Izmir, where a group of 9 or 10 people attacked a doctor who did not write a prescription to somebody without examination. The attacker was a man who refused to bring his wife to the hospital but wanted the doctor to write a prescription. The first attack against the doctor came from the husband as the physician was assaulted by the man. Few days later the same husband brought a group of friends and family to attack the doctor. Those attackers who were caught were immediately released by the courts.

To protest this attack, the union of health care workers staged a one-day strike to call attention to the issue of safety in health care.

A strange contradiction occurred at the same time the health care workers staged the meeting in Istanbul. In Ankara, the nation’s capital, a meeting organized by the Chamber of Physicians of Ankara to protest the attacks against the health care workers was attacked by the police.

When the doctors and other care takers met at the gates of Dışkapı Hospital, the police warned they were not allowed to hold the meeting. When the workers and the doctors insisted on reading their statement against violence, the police attacked, dragged the health workers on the ground, handcuffed and took them under detention. Despite the police violence, the doctors read their statements aloud and vowed to stage a strike on April 17^th, the “Day to prevent violence in health care.”

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